Many projects, given their size and complexity, require the collaboration of many individuals. A product installation manual, for example, has many sections, each having detailed specifications for the product. Each section may be edited by one or more individuals knowledgeable in the material contained in the section. Coordinating and tracking work on the documents is generally referred to as “product work flow.”
In one prior art system, company employees can check-out a document to work on it and then check it back in when done. The system tracks the changes everyone makes, a method called versioning. The system sends e-mail alerts to let others know of the changes. The system may also include a separate message board where employees can talk about the document. When the document is finished, it may be locked by an administrator and made available for searches on the company's intranet.
This prior art system integrates Microsoft Outlook™, Microsoft Word™, a server-based document repository, a server-based full-text search engine, a message board, and some type of project management or workflow application. The system may also include reporting tools that will read through the communications and present the administrator with various statistics.
This system has several drawbacks. First, information is contained in Word documents. Search queries among a number of documents tell users which documents contain the search terms, but the queries do not tell the user where in the document the search terms are found. The user must still look through each document to determine where the search terms are located. Second the documents are not easily accessible to multiple users, especially those at remote locations such as customer sites. Third, the documents cannot be easily or quickly edited and reformatted for display.